The Cross and the World

Wuart the flesh is in the smallest circle of my own

person, that the world is in the larger circle of mankind. ‘‘The flesh’? and ‘‘the world’’ are two manifestations of the same ‘‘god of this world’’ who is served by both. When the Cross deals with ‘‘the flesh’’ as accursed, we at once discover what the nature and power of the world are. ‘‘They hated both Me and My Father.’’ The proof of this was that they crucified Christ. But Christ obtained the victory on the Cross, and freed us from the power of ‘‘the world.’’ And now we can say: ‘‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom ‘the world’ is crucified unto me, and I unto ‘the world.’”’

The Cross was to Paul every day a holy reality, both in what he had to suffer from the world, and in the victory which the Cross constantly gave. John also writes: ‘‘The whole world lieth in wickedness’’ (1 John 5: 19). ‘‘Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God! This IS He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ ... and it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth’’ (1 John 5: 5, 6). Against the two great powers of the god of this world, God has given us two great powers from heaven, namely, the Cross and the Spirit.

PL